(LifeSiteNews) – Cardinal Pietro Parolin is a leading Italian Freemason’s choice for Pope, and the former Grand Master of the Grand Orient of Italy has also hinted that the late Pope Francis may have been a Freemason himself.

In an interview published by the Italian Il Fatto Quotidiano newspaper on May 3, 2025,  Giuliano Di Bernardo, a leader in masonic circles, revealed that he is a close friend of Cardinal Pietro Parolin. He said that he and Cardinal Parolin have known each other for at least twenty years and have mutual respect for each other.

“If the Church still has a glimmer of rationality, it must elect Pietro Parolin as Pope. It is the only way to restore its authority,” he declared.

Giuliano Di Bernardo has belonged to more than one masonic group. In the 1990s, he left Grand Orient of Italy to found a new masonic order, the Regular Grand Lodge of Italy, which was, he says, more aligned with the principles of the English masonic tradition. Disillusioned even by this experience, in 2002 he founded another masonic group, called “Dignity Order” as well as the Academy of the Illuminati.

He became friends with Pietro Parolin about twenty years ago. After he founded the “Dignity Order” and the Academy of the Illuminati in 2002, a request came from the Vatican to include a Church representative, he said. Di Bernardo was then introduced to Bishop Gheorghi Eldarov, who at the time was investigating, on behalf of the Secretariat of State, the so-called ‘Bulgarian track’ (actually a diversion) related to the attempted assassination of John Paul II. To this day, Eldarov is officially listed among the founders of the Academy.

“One day, Eldarov told me that there was someone in the Vatican’s Secretariat of State who wanted to meet me. I found myself face-to-face with the then-Undersecretary, Pietro Parolin,” Di Bernardo said. “There was an immediate intellectual affinity, so much so that we collaborated on several projects. We have remained very close friends.”

Di Bernardo spoke more extensively about this collaboration when he was questioned by the Italian judiciary regarding certain mafia infiltrations into Freemasonry. On that occasion, he stated that, after 2002, “I returned [to the Secretariat of State] several times and helped Parolin resolve a problem with the Chinese government.”

The former Grand Master believes that the Church’s decline began with the Second Vatican Council, but that it was under John Paul II that the institution of the papacy was eroded at its foundations. According to Di Bernardo, Benedict XVI tried to save the papacy but, faced with the “abyss” that had already been opened, eventually decided to step down.

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The Freemason holds that Pope Francis continued this great dismantling of the papacy rapidly and effectively, and that that his entire program was revealed in his initial greeting in St. Peter’s Square, when he introduced himself as the Bishop of Rome, rather than as the Pope.

Di Bernardo suggested that Jorge Mario Bergoglio had very strong ties, if not an actual initiation, to Freemasonry in Argentina.

“Bergoglio, as a cardinal, certainly had relations with Freemasonry,” he declared.

Di Bernardo criticized Pope Francis for reaffirming the Church’s condemnation of Freemasonry, which has been reiterated by all popes over the past three centuries. However, the journalist asked him: “There are strange letters circulating in which, before becoming pope, Bergoglio on several occasions signed his name by placing three black dots in the shape of a triangle at the end—symbolism linked to Freemasonry.”

The former Grand Master, without going so far as to confirm the suggestion, stated: “I believe I know the kernel of truth behind it. In South America, Freemasonry is very powerful and widespread, but those who are Freemasons are often also Catholic—there is no incompatibility.”

This is not a view held by the Catholic Church. In response to the rise of the Masonic Lodges, Clement XII regarded them so seriously, and membership in them so dangerous, that in the 1738 papal bull In Eminenti he imposed an automatic excommunication on any Catholic who joined them.

This sentence of excommunication was renewed by successive popes many times over. It was incorporated into the 1917 Code of Canon Law, and although not explicitly mentioned in the 1983 Code, a special intervention and clarification from the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith (CDF), titled Declaration on Masonic Associations and Irreconcilability of Christian Faith and Freemasonry, instructed that the Church’s discipline and judgement regarding freemasonry remained unchanged from the 1917 Code.

The reasons the Church forbids membership in Freemasonry include the latter’s secretive and binding oaths, its hatred of the Catholic Church and mission to destroy it through undermining the papacy, and its denial of the truths of faith.

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